Social status, colorism and racism

According to classical scholar Frank Snowden, skin color did not determine social status in ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome. These ancient civilizations viewed relations between the major power and the subordinate state as more significant in a person's status than their skin colors.need quotation to verify

Nevertheless, some social groups favor specific skin coloring. The preferred skin tone varies by culture and has varied over time. A number of indigenous African groups, such as the Maasai, associated pale skin with being cursed or caused by evil spirits associated with witchcraft. They would abandon their children born with conditions such as albinism and showed a sexual preference for darker skin.

Many cultures have historically favored lighter skin for women. Before the Industrial Revolution, inhabitants of the continent of Europe preferred pale skin, which they interpreted as a sign of high social status. The poorer classes worked outdoors and got darker skin from exposure to the sun, while the upper class stayed indoors and had light skin. Hence light skin became associated with wealth and high position. Women would put lead-based cosmetics on their skin to whiten their skin tone artificially. However, when not strictly monitored, these cosmetics caused lead poisoning. Other methods also aimed at achieving a light-skinned appearance, including the use of arsenic to whiten skin, and powders. Women would wear full-length clothes when outdoors, and would use gloves and parasols to provide shade from the sun.

Colonization and enslavement as carried out by European countries became involved with colorism and racism, associated with the belief that people with dark skin were uncivilized, inferior, and should be subordinate to lighter-skinned invaders. This belief exists to an extent in modern times as well. Institutionalized slavery in North America led people to perceive lighter-skinned African-Americans as more intelligent, cooperative, and beautiful. Such lighter-skinned individuals had a greater likelihood of working as house slaves and of receiving preferential treatment from plantation owners and from overseers. For example, they had a chance to get an education. The preference for fair skin remained prominent until the end of the Victorian era, but racial stereotypes about worth and beauty persisted in the last half of the 20th century and continue in the present day. African-American journalist Jill Nelson wrote that, "To be both prettiest and black was impossible," and elaborated:

We learn as girls that in ways both subtle and obvious, personal and political, our value as females is largely determined by how we look. … For black women, the domination of physical aspects of beauty in women's definition and value render us invisible, partially erased, or obsessed, sometimes for a lifetime, since most of us lack the major talismans of Western beauty. Black women find themselves involved in a lifelong effort to self-define in a culture that provides them no positive reflection.

A preference for fair or lighter skin continues in some countries, including Latin American countries where whites form a minority. In Brazil, a dark-skinned person is more likely to experience discrimination. Many actors and actresses in Latin America have European features—blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. A light-skinned person is more privileged and has a higher social status; a person with light skin is considered more beautiful and lighter skin suggests that the person has more wealth. Skin color is such an obsession in some countries that specific words describe distinct skin tones - from (for example) "jincha", Puerto Rican slang for "glass of milk" to "morena", literally "brown".

In Pakistan & India, society regards pale skin as more attractive and associates dark skin with lower class status; this results in a massive market for skin-whitening creams. Fairer skin-tones also correlate to higher caste-status in the Hindu social order—although the system is not based on skin tone. Actors and actresses in Indian cinema tend to have light skin tones, and Indian cinematographers have used graphics and intense lighting to achieve more "desirable" skin tones. Fair skin tones are advertised as an asset in Indian marketing.

Skin-whitening products have remained popular over time, often due to historical beliefs and perceptions about fair skin. Sales of skin-whitening products across the world grew from $40 billion to $43 billion in 2008. In South and East Asian countries, people have traditionally seen light skin as more attractive, and a preference for lighter skin remains prevalent. In ancient China and Japan, for example, pale skin can be traced back to ancient drawings depicting women and goddesses with fair skin tones.citation needed In ancient China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, pale skin was seen as a sign of wealth. Thus skin-whitening cosmetic products are popular in East Asia. Four out of ten women surveyed in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea used a skin-whitening cream, and more than 60 companies globally compete for Asia's estimated $18 billion market. Changes in regulations in the cosmetic industry led to skin-care companies introducing harm-free skin lighteners. In Japan, the geisha have a reputation for their white-painted faces, and the appeal of the bihaku (美白), or "beautiful white", ideal leads many Japanese women to avoid any form of tanning. There are exceptions to this, with Japanese fashion trends such as ganguro emphasizing tanned skin. Skin whitening is also not uncommon in Africa, and several research projects have suggested a general preference for lighter skin in the African-American community. In contrast, one study on men of the Bikosso tribe in Cameroon found no preference for attractiveness of females based on lighter skin color, bringing into question the universality of earlier studies that had exclusively focused on skin-color preferences among non-African populations.

Significant exceptions to a preference for lighter skin started to appear in Western culture in the mid-20th century. However a 2010 study found a preference for lighter-skinned women in New Zealand and California. Though sun-tanned skin was once associated with the sun-exposed manual labor of the lower class, the associations became dramatically reversed during this time—a change usually credited to the trendsetting Frenchwoman Coco Chanel (1883-1971) presenting tanned skin as fashionable, healthy, and luxurious. As of 2017update, though an overall preference for lighter skin remains prevalent in the United States, many within the country regard tanned skin as both more attractive and healthier than pale or very dark skin. Western mass media and popular culture continuedwhen? to reinforce negative stereotypes about dark skin, but in some circles pale skin has become associated with indoor office-work while tanned skin has become associated with increased leisure time, sportiness and good health that comes with wealth and higher social status. Studies have also emerged indicating that the degree of tanning is directly related to how attractive a young woman is.